AngularJS: How to run additional code after AngularJS has rendered a template?

Question

I have an Angular template in the DOM. When my controller gets new data from a service, it updates the model in the $scope, and re-renders the template. All good so far.

The issue is that I need to also do some extra work after the template has been re-rendered and is in the DOM (in this case a jQuery plugin).

It seems like there should be an event to listen to, such as AfterRender, but I can't find any such thing. Maybe a directive would be a way to go, but it seemed to fire too early as well.

Here is a jsFiddle outlining my problem: Fiddle- AngularIssue

== UPDATE ==

Based on helpful comments, I've accordingly switched to a directive to handle DOM manipulation, and implemented a model $watch inside the directive. However, I still am having the same base issue; the code inside of the $watch event fires before the template has been compiled and inserted into the DOM, therefore, the jquery plugin is always evaluating an empty table.

Interestingly, if I remove the async call the whole thing works fine, so that's a step in the right direction.

Here is my updated Fiddle to reflect these changes: http://jsfiddle.net/uNREn/12/

Answer

This post is old, but I change your code to:

scope.$watch("assignments", function (value) {//I change here
  var val = value || null;            
  if (val)
    element.dataTable({"bDestroy": true});
  });
}

see jsfiddle.

I hope it helps you